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Inside Oracle's Data Integration community

Sabre Holdings Case Study Webcast Recap

Last week at Oracle we had a very important event. In addition to the visit by the roaming Gnome, who really enjoyed posing for pictures on our campus, I had the priviledge to host a
webcast with guest speaker Amjad Saeed from Sabre Holdings. We focused on Sabre's data integration solution leveraging Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator for their
enterprise travel data warehouse (ETDW).

Amjad, who leads the development
effort for Sabre's enterprise data warehouse, presented us how they approached
various data integration challenges, such as growing number of sources and data volumes, and what results they were able to
achieve. He shared with us how using Oracle's
data integration products in heterogeneous environments enabled
right-time market insights, reduced
complexity, and decreased time to market by 40%. Sabre was also able to
standardize development for its global DW development team, achieve
real-time view in the execution of the integration processes, and the
ability to manage the data warehouse & BI performance on demand. I would like to thank Amjad again very much for taking the time to share their data integration best practices with us on this webcast.

In this webcast my colleague Sandrine Riley and I provided an overview
of Oracle Data Integration products' differentiators. We explained
architectural strengths that deliver a complete and integrated platform
that offers high performance, fast time-to-value, and low cost of
ownership. If you have not had a chance to attend
the live event we have the webcast now available on demand via this
link for you to watch at your convenience:

There were many great questions from our audience. Unfortunately we did not have enough time to respond to all of them. While we are individually following up with the attendees, I also
want to post the questions and answer for some of the commonly asked
questions here.

Question: How do I learn Oracle
Data Integrator or GoldenGate? Is training the only option ?

Answer: We highly recommend training
through Oracle University. The courses will cover all the
foundational components needed to get up and running with ODI or
GoldenGate. Oracle University offers instructor-led and online
trainings. You can go to http://education.oracle.com to get a
complete listing of the courses available.Additionally – but not
in replacement of training – you can get started with a guided
‘getting started’ type tutorial which you can find on our OTN page: in the ‘Getting Started’ section of the page.Also, there are some helpful
‘Oracle by Example’ exercises/videos which you can find on the same page.

For Oracle GoldenGate, we recommend watching instructional videos on its Youtube channel:
Youtube/oraclegoldengate. A good example is here

Last but not least, at Oracle OpenWorld
there are opportunities to learn in depth by attending our hands-on-labs, even though it does not compare to/replace
taking training.

Question: Compare and contrast Oracle Data Integrator to the Oracle Warehouse Builder ETL
process. Is ODI repository-driven and based on creation of "maps"
when creating ETL modules?

Answer: ODI has been built from the ground up to be heterogeneous – so it will excel on both Oracle and non-Oracle platforms. OWB has been a more Oracle centric product. ODI mappings are developed with a declarative design based approach, and processes are executed via an agent – who is orchestrating and delegating the workload in a set-based manner to the database. OWB deploys packages of code on the database and produces more procedural code. For more details – please read our ODI architecture white paper.

Question: Is the metadata navigator for ODI
flexible and comprehensive so that it could be used as a
documentation tool for the ETL?

Answer: Oracle Data Integrator's metadata navigator has been renamed – now called ODI Console. The ODI console is a web-based interface to view in a more picture based manner what is inside of the ODI repository. It could be used as documentation. Beyond the ODI console, ODI provides full documentation from the ODI Studio. For any given process, project, etc. you are able to right click – and there is an option that says ‘print’ – and this will provide you with a PDF document including the details down to the transformations. These documents may be a more appropriate method of documentation. Also – please check out a whitepaper on Managing Metadata with ODI.

If you would like to learn more about
Oracle Data Integration products please check out our free resources here. I also would like to remind you to follow us on social media if
you do not already. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and
Linkedin.